


White Hat, Black Hat

by rokhal



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Addiction, Con Artists, Demons, Gen, Season/Series 07, Super-sniffer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-02
Updated: 2013-02-02
Packaged: 2017-11-27 20:54:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/666386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rokhal/pseuds/rokhal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam and Dean hustle pool. They've changed, and so has the game.</p>
            </blockquote>





	White Hat, Black Hat

They were always hustling, these days. Being too scared to spend credit saved them a bundle on motel rooms, but they and their guns still needed to eat. Sometimes they stopped in a town hours from their next hunt just to find a bar with a game. Sometimes they picked pockets. Gas, they siphoned.

They needed props for these cons, which was why Sam was sulking over a beer and Dean, across the bar, was telling jokes after two shots of whiskey. Sam swirled the dregs in his glass and wondered why Dean had gone for the whiskey. With the help of his flask, Dean maintained himself on a precisely calibrated plane of intoxication, enough to soften the edges but not loosen his tongue, and Sam didn't know what it meant if Dean was tipping himself over the edge—if he'd return to status quo tomorrow or nudge his set point a hair for the drunker. If Sam should do something. Could do something.

He knew what the answer was for himself. It was stupid, but he wanted to believe those rules didn't apply to Dean.

Dean meandered over to the pool table and started up a friendly game with a couple of younger guys, grinning and joking, smiling at their girlfriends, but not too much. “When you smile, you look just like my daughter,” Dean told one of the girls, leaning sloppily against the table—which, okay, that was new. It seemed to go over pretty well, though. The girl blushed, the guys laughed.

Dean was bar-likeable. People could lose to him and walk away feeling warm inside. Sam wasn't. The plan was, Dean would win once the stakes got high enough, Sam would challenge him and take the cash, then if they were lucky one of Dean's new buddies would challenge Sam, Sam would beat them, too, and he and Dean would disappear into the night. The plan hinged on Dean charming the whole crowd and Sam looking like an asshole. Sam expected it to go like clockwork.

He brooded menacingly in the shadows and watched Dean play.

A cluster of women in tight jeans blocked his view, and he stared up at them even as he kept a sharp ear out for the click of cues. They chattered quietly and laughed loudly, casting darting looks among themselves and around the bar. Sam could only pick up a word here and there, and found himself watching them like a pack of wild dogs in a documentary. A young bottle-red-head seemed to be the leader, the still point, the first to move. The circle shuffled around and expelled a small, dispirited older woman, the red-head giving her a final push. The older one sighed at the floor before pasting on a smile. Sam was surprised to see her approach his booth. 

She wasn't bad-looking, just a little older than Dean. Skinny. Put-together. Misery clung to her like spilled perfume. Her fingertips brushed the table, and she leaned down, arching her throat in a practiced motion. “Hey, stranger,” she said, soft and low. “You think—”

“No,” Sam interrupted. Her smile flickered and her eyes went pained. Sam stared narrow-eyed as she straightened. “Sorry.” His tone was surly. She turned away and rejoined the group, the red-head comforting her with light touches and sharp-toothed smiles. Soon the older woman and another friend broke off for the bar.

Sam hated to be the bad guy, but sometimes it was so goddamn easy.

The remaining women scowled at him, and he cocked an eyebrow unrepentantly.

Dean whooped from the pool table. Behind the forest of slender arms and blouses, Sam thought he saw him snatch one of his opponents into a back-pounding hug. A few spectators cheered and clapped. One of the girlfriends whistled. 

Sam rose from the booth and rolled his shoulders, feeling like Black Sabbath should be starting up on the jukebox. 

_Bad Animals_. That worked, too.

He caught Dean's eye for an instant, a spark of doesn't-this-all-suck-out-loud passing between them, and as he began to stalk toward the pool table, the red-haired woman spun away from the pack and headed him off.

It was either mow her over or stop like a half-way decent human being. He stopped. He scowled. She sneered up at him, baring straight white teeth. Whatever her problem was, she was going to screw up the con, but maybe he could use this—Sam cupped her shoulders in his palms and physically turned her aside, out of his way. As he leaned over her, he caught a whiff of her soft hair.

He nearly dropped to his knees right there in the bar. Before he knew it, he'd bent down to sniff her throat, the hustle slipping his mind as he thought of the alley outside, the basement, a storage room, even right there in the booth, anywhere dark—and a tool, something sharp in his hand. It was an instinctual drive, rumbling like a rockslide about to bury him, bestial and strange. He didn't do this, never, not even when he'd been nothing but instinct.

The woman pushed him away with firm fingers under his chin, a shuttered, calculating look in her eyes.

Sam joined Dean at the table. He beat him. Dean was looking a little wobbly, and Sam wasn't entirely sure he was faking. One of Dean's new best friends couldn't stand the thought of Sam walking away a rich man, especially with Dean patting his old opponents on the back and looking so good-naturedly bewildered, and Sam beat him, too, and netted a total of three hundred and seventy dollars. As he left the angry, demoralized crowd, to be followed in a few minutes by Dean, he paused at the door and scanned the bar until he spotted the red-haired woman again, poised at the counter in the midst of her followers, watching him in the back mirror. 

He ached for her in a way he was afraid to identify.

She just smelled so good.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for rattyjol's promot on comment_fic:  
> http://comment-fic.livejournal.com/315610.html
> 
> "Supernatural, Sam + Dean, an alcoholic and a blood junkie walk into a bar"


End file.
